The Dream of Scipio Read Online Free PDF Page B

small bag, bade farewell to his beloved mother, left Vaison, and went to Avignon, where he remained for the rest of his life, a period in which his father’s aspirations were destroyed.
    For Ceccani was a man of some cultivation, and though he never became one of those fascinating, erudite philosopher-cardinals who redeemed the otherwise corrupt church of the next century, he read as widely as was possible in those days and had the beginnings of a library. To this collection of some one hundred fifty manuscripts Olivier was eventually given access. Not that Ceccani initially took a great deal of interest in the boy; he was no teacher and had little human warmth about him. But neglect was exactly what Olivier needed, and he flourished under the new regime. And he fell in love for the first time, the most enduring and consuming passion of his life. He began to read. He arose at four in the morning and read until his duties began; ate his meals quickly so he could run back to the library and read some more, if only for ten minutes at a time; read in the evening with candles stolen from the kitchens until he fell asleep.
    There was not such a wide range of books available; some Aristotle, in a Latin translation of an Arabic version of the Greek; the church fathers; Boethius, whom he loved for his wisdom; Augustine, whom he admired for his humanity. But it was the day he discovered Cicero that changed everything. The beauty of the prose, the noble elegance of the ideas, the lofty majesty of the conceptions were like draughts of strong wine, and when he first discovered, then read, the one manuscript Ceccani possessed, he wept with joy for a full twenty minutes before immediately starting again.
    Some six months later, he began his new career as a collector when he was in a shop to buy some sweetmeats for the household. This was not his task; rather it was something he often asked to be allowed to do, as the errand gave him the opportunity of leaving the dark, forboding palace where he now had quarters in the garret, and wander the streets of Avignon at will. Every time he went out he was transfixed by wonder, overwhelmed by the bustle of humanity, the noise, the smells, the excitement. For Avignon had transformed itself in a matter of a few years from a minor city into one of the wonders of the world. The arrival of the papal court, forced to leave Rome by civil strife and now showing every sign of staying forever, had sucked in merchants and bankers, priests and painters, goldsmiths, petitioners, lawyers, cooks, costume makers, furniture makers and masons, woodworkers and silversmiths, robbers and whores and charlatans who came from all over Christendom to jostle in the streets and compete for favor, influence, and fortune.
    The city was not big enough for them all; it was bursting at the seams and men had to put up with being squashed, exploited, and robbed, but few found they were unprepared to pay the price. Bees around a honey pot, flies around dung; those were the common verdicts. Olivier had no opinion on the morality of it; all he knew was that a simple walk in the morning during the market, in the afternoon when the big religious processions took place, or in the evening when the city was taken over by drinkers and diners, singing and dancing, left his mind dizzy with excitement and all his senses tingling with joy.
    And there were buildings as well; hundreds of houses, churches, palaces all being thrown up as quickly as possible, new land being leveled, old dwellings razed to make space for bigger ones. The first time he went into the papal palace he could not believe his eyes; he felt sure he was walking into an immense cave in a mountain; no man, surely, could dream of a building so vast. And yet even that was not big enough; the new pope, Clement, had deemed it all too small and was beginning again, doubling the size of the original, with decorations so sumptuous and so costly they would have no equal in the world.